


To Hell and Back

by Silencing



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU - Comicverse, Marvel, Young Avengers
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-19
Updated: 2013-03-19
Packaged: 2017-12-05 20:13:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/727458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silencing/pseuds/Silencing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki finds himself in Hell, hunting down a recently-deceased Boy Wonder.  Finding Damian might be the easy part, though - getting out of hell is a hell of a lot harder than getting in.  Eventual pairing will be Damian/bbLoki.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Hell and Back

Loki’s first thought upon stepping out into Dante’s Hell was that he should have brought an extra layer. His second was the realization that he might have made a mistake in coming.

The frozen wasteland of the Ninth Circle stretched on endlessly in all directions, a desolate expanse of ice and snow and scouring wind. A grim, gray fog hung low in the distance, obscuring any landmarks that might tell Loki where he’d landed. He’d never been to this realm, but he’d heard of it often enough – nine circles that supposedly held Satan’s true body at its heart. Loki turned in place, squinting against the wicked ice crystals threatening to blind him, casting about for anything that might tell him where he was.

“This is a cursed place,” he muttered, and meant it. Not even Jotunheim was so desolate, so numbingly cold. His tunic and hood gave him little protection against the cold, so with a frown and a sigh, Loki let the blue creep up from his fingertips, falling back on his tainted blood to help him cope with the strange landscape he’d found himself in. It was his Jotun nature that’d allowed him to walk freely into Hell’s lowest circle in the first place – it didn’t make much sense to pretend he was anything other than what he was.

Loki turned once more into the wind, shading his eyes, willing himself to see further, and then realized he was able to face the wind. It was all blowing from one direction, howling like a whole flock of banshees. Loki recalled a story he’d heard once about Satan’s great, monstrous wings, ever beating even as the rest of him froze solid. Now that he thought about it, there seemed to be a rhythm to the gale, and a low pulsing in the distance like the beat of some grotesque, gargantuan heart.

Loki wisely turned in the opposite direction, and began to walk.

He never should have come. Great seething balls of hellfire – this was supposed to be a joke. He didn’t even know if the soul he sought was the right one, or if he could retrieve it if he ever found it, and even if he did, how were the pair of them supposed to get out? He was already sketchy on the mythology of this place, and while he knew there was a gate somewhere, actually getting that gate open was another matter entirely.

“Just keep walking, Loki,” he muttered to himself, stuffing his hands under his armpits to keep them warm. “You’re bound to find someone eventually.”

Someone, or something, and there was a good chance that whatever it was, it’d want to eat him. 

For being the innermost circle of Hell, the plane was a surprisingly quiet place. Loki had expected demons, or violent forces of nature at the least, but all he had to contend with was the wind and the cold. There didn’t even seem to be any souls around – just empty stillness. Loki’s booted feet left prints in the powder, but the wind scoured them away moments later, leaving not even a hint that he’d ever been there.

He walked for what felt like hours, and after a while began to wonder if he was getting anywhere at all. He was able to mark his passage by small features of the barren landscape – an oddly-shaped spar of ice, small piles of rime-covered stones, a faint depression in the snow. Along with the unchanging direction of the wind, they let him knew he was still walking a straight path, though in a place like this, that didn’t mean much. The way forward might change with every step, just to frustrate him.

At last he began to make out shapes in the distance, looming out of the fog, and his heart leaped in his chest. Even finding out he’d been walking towards Satan this whole time would be better than going mad on the empty plain. His teeth had begun to chatter, even with his Jotun blood, and he knew he’d have to rest soon or risk the cold sapping his strength and will. He was only a boy, after all – there wasn’t much of him there to freeze.

Another hour of walking led him at last to the foot of a high, icy cliff that stretched away into the fog in either direction, endless as far as Loki was concerned. His approach had revealed what looked to be a long mountain range, its peaks lost in the same infuriating gray clouds.

“If I know my myths,” Loki murmured to himself, touching his chin and squinting up towards the top of the cliff, “The only way out is up. At least I’m going in the right direction.”

Mjolnir would come in really handy right now. Thor would, too – Loki suspected he’d be a good deal warmer. As he walked along the cliff, looking for a way up, he thought about how nice it would be to simply fly above the cliffs, clinging to his brother’s back like a monkey. Would Thor come looking for him, he wondered? Loki hadn’t told anyone where he was going save the two mortals who’d sent him on this quest in the first place, and even then he’d only mentioned it in the vaguest of terms.

“Think, Loki.” He cupped his fingers around a chunk of ice, wincing at the cold. “If there’s a way down, there must be a way up again.”

The more he studied the cliff, the more he came to realize that he wasn’t on an open plain at all – he was standing on the bed of a long-frozen lake. The cliffs above him were solid ice all the way through, and in places he could see the frozen bodies of immense creatures locked deep within. Perhaps that was the key – if he could melt or carve handholds in, he might be able to scale the cliff face. Unfortunately, there was nothing around to help him, not even a sharp stone or twig of kindling. Loki stared at the ice wall in frustration, brows furrowed, wracking his brain for a solution and kicking himself for not coming better prepared.

He was so deep in thought that he didn’t notice the low, heavy sweeping sound until it was almost upon him. Something was approaching from the top of the cliff, and when Loki turned in the direction of the sound he saw clouds of snow falling in its wake. Whatever it was, it was big, and probably had row upon row of sharp teeth besides.

Loki flattened himself against the cliff and tried to think small thoughts, holding his breath. Chances were good that the creature wouldn’t see or hear him, but Loki couldn’t speak for any of its other senses. As the sweeping noise came nearer, his heart thundered so loud in his ears that he was sure it’d give him away, and sure enough, the creature stopped right above him, still beyond Loki’s line of sight.

There came a long, painful silence, neither of them moving, and Loki wondered if the thing meant to kill him through fright. The more he thought about it, though, the more he realized the monster was probably just as confused as he was. How often did anything warm end up down here?

“If you’re going to eat me, can you get it over with?” he called at last, summoning up his bravest face. “It’s very cold down here.”

After another harrowing pause, the creature moved towards him again, and Loki found himself standing in the shadow of an immense manta ray. Its skin was a grim corpse gray, and a fine layer of frost covered every inch of its body from the ends of its wings to the tip of its barbed tail. It was hard to tell from such a featureless visage, but Loki thought it looked more puzzled than aggressive.

“Of course you’re a devilfish,” he said with a faint smile. “What else would you be.”

The manta slipped over the cliff edge, graceful even with its immense size, and swam through the air to land a few yards away from Loki. Fiendish runes and ugly raised scars covered its huge, flat back, and Loki realized that this was a creature not used to kindness. But why should it be, in a place like this? That gave him some advantage, at least, and the manta didn’t seem eager to attack him anyway.

“I’m looking for a way up these cliffs,” he explained. “I’m trying to find someone on the other side.”

The manta edged forward with a leathery rustle, waving its weird mouthparts at him, almost like it was trying to speak. Loki swallowed down his fear and closed the gap between them, reaching out to lay a hand on the creature’s head. Its skin was rubbery and cold, but it was still nearer to a living thing than Loki had expected.

“Do you understand me, oh great devilfish?”

The manta brushed his leg with one of its mouthparts, and the fact that he still had a leg after that seemed like a good sign. Even without teeth, it was strong enough to snap him like a toothpick.

“I really hope we understand one another,” he said, patting its head lightly before clambering up onto its broad back, careful not to touch any of the runes with his boots. The manta’s body buckled, nearly tossing him off, but after a moment it settled down, twitching the ends of its wings nervously. It expects me to hurt it, Loki thought, smoothing a hand over one of the creature’s scars. 

“Take me up, oh most magnificent of devilfish,” he said, tugging on the front edge of its head to try and give it the right idea. “As far away from here as you can take me.”

The manta shuddered, then lurched into the air, nearly tossing Loki off again. He grabbed onto its head as well as he could, fingers slipping on its icy skin, the world lurching dizzily beneath him. Riding the manta was like trying to ride a bucking dinner plate. It didn’t seem to be deliberately trying to throw him, but it clearly wasn’t used to carrying passengers, either. Most of the time it skimmed along the surface so close that Loki could almost reach over and touch the ground, but at other times it would lurch skyward or twist onto its side, and Loki saw his brief and still brand-new life flash before his eyes.

Between bouts of gut-wrenching terror he began to recognize the landscape below them and make sense of it. He hadn’t been standing at the base of a mountain range, but rather a series of huge, curved ice cliffs going up like stair steps. Each cliff was covered in frozen bodies lined up shoulder to shoulder, some of them completely entombed in ice, others with their heads and faces exposed. Pale blue man-sized figures stalked among them, lancing at them with curved ice hooks, spotting the ground with fast-freezing pools of red. The manta flew too swiftly for Loki to make out much detail, but the figures looked much like the ice imps he was used to seeing. They hissed and reached for him as he passed, but the manta shied away from their groping hands and savage hooks, and Loki realized where the creature’s scars had come from.

At last, when Loki’s fingers felt like they’d frozen to the manta’s skin and when his whole body was numb from the icy-cold wind, the manta breached the tallest of the cliffs and came to rest in a clear patch of snow amidst more frozen bodies. It’d pulled up short at the last moment, tossing Loki to the ground at last, and seemed reluctant to move any further, almost as though it’d hit an invisible barrier. Loki got to his feet with a wince, certain that he’d have bruises on his knees after all of this, but grateful nonetheless.

“Thank you, oh prince of devilfish,” he said with a sweeping bow and a touch to the manta’s nose. “I will sing tales of your bravery throughout the realms. Now, which way to the exit?”

The manta gestured with one of its wings, then drifted back the way it’d come, soon vanishing from sight. Loki sighed and pulled his hood up again, sticking his fingers in his mouth to thaw them, and carried on in the direction his strange guide had pointed.

He saw soon enough why the manta had stopped where it had. This stretch of snow and frozen bodies wasn’t nearly as wide as the others had been, and Loki quickly began to make out his next challenge – a pair of immense, world-striding legs.

Frost giants. Really, really big frost giants. No wonder he’d had such an easy time dropping into this realm.

Loki drew a deep lungful of icy air and strode forward, praying to all the gods he’d ever known that the giants proved as amenable as the manta ray had.

~*~

Hell was a cold place. Damian hadn’t expected it to be so. It didn’t make much sense, either, not when he could see and smell the smoke wafting off the boiling river in the distance. Sometimes the wind would change course, and instead of the endless chill blowing in from the center of Hell he’d get a hot breeze that stank of sulfur and suffering. Most of the time, though, Hell was a cold place, and so Damian kept to the shelter of the trees, preferring to take his chances with the Suicides rather than suffer a constant chill.

Time had little meaning in this place, and Damian didn’t know if he’d been there for days, or weeks, or even years. Perhaps it’d only been hours, all stretched out in unending suffering. He supposed he should have been thankful – he wasn’t a tree, and he wasn’t submerged to his neck in boiling blood. The Minotaur and the Harpies didn’t seem to know what to do with him. They stared at him with suspicion, unable to act, and that was how Damian had first realized that he didn’t belong here.

He’d led a good life, after all, during those last precious months, and he’d died a hero. At least, he told himself he had – he didn’t know what had happened after the lights went out, whether his father had managed to save their city. It was only a passing concern to him now, a thought to be chewed on while he wandered between bleeding tree-trunks. 

The Harpies and the Minotaur had no love for him, but that hadn’t left him completely friendless in this strange place. The damned were curiously eager for conversation, though Damian supposed his presence was a breath of fresh air to them. He was neither doling out torture, nor being tortured himself, and boredom left him eager to hear all that the damned wanted to tell. 

His favorite was a great old oak in the middle of the Wood, a grandfather of a tree who’d been there from the very dawn of Hell itself. He’d long since forgotten himself, but there was plenty he could tell about the nature of Hell itself. 

Damian wove his way through the wood until he came to the oak’s roots, then scaled its crusted gray trunk, moving from branch to branch like a squirrel. The rough bark under his fingers reminded him of cold cement and brick, and sometimes he remembered the feel of a cape whipping at his legs and the shadow of the Bat blotting out the moon. 

From the top of the immense oak he could see all around him for miles. He’d learned that hell was an enormous basin, a series of curved cliffs spiraling ever downward towards the place that the cold wind blew from. The wood, the river, the wide desert beyond seemed to stretch on, never-ending, in both directions. Before him rose a massive cliff-face that bracketed the edge of the boiling river, and behind him, a sheer drop to fathomless depths below. Someday, Damian intended to venture in one direction or the other, to see what lay beyond, but every time he tried to make plans he found himself overcome by lethargy. Why leave when he had everything he needed right here?

He perched near the crown of the tree on a branch as wide as a park bench, legs dangling out over the long drop below. The ash-colored roughspun tunic he wore, that he’d been wearing from the moment he arrived, was cut long enough to protect the backs of his thighs from splinters. When he’d settled in, he reached out toward the end of the branch and snapped off a bare twig, watching thick red blood ooze from the bark like sap.

“Good day, young master demon,” the tree intoned in a voice full of dust and time. “It is a pleasure to speak with you.”

“And to you, old oak,” Damian replied, remembering his manners. “I’m sorry for breaking your bark.”

“Not at all, lad. Have you come for a tale, or simply to talk?”

Damian stretched out on his stomach on the branch, pillowing one arm beneath him and using his free hand to draw meaningless patterns with the tree’s blood. “I don’t know. The same as usual, I guess.”

The tree seemed to settle in without moving, like an old man sinking deeper into his rocker. “I have a new tale for you today, master demon. The winds are changing, and something new stirs at the center of the Pit.”

Damian perked up, feeling a bit of his lethargy dissipate. “Something new? Something like me?”

“Something that still breathes. I have heard it in my roots – he has crossed Cocytus, and seeks aid from Typhon. They whisper his name even now: the Trickster, the Lie-smith. He has made a promise that must be kept.”

Damian frowned, wrinkling his nose. “You could stand to be a bit clearer, old grandfather.”

“You will know the truth of my words soon enough,” the tree said. “None in this realm can stop the godling from making good on his word.”

Damian felt a twitch of nervousness in the pit of his stomach, a sensation he thought he’d long since forgotten. He’d had enough dealings with so-called gods and devils for one lifetime, and one undeath for that matter. Still, perhaps he’d have a chance to find out why he’d come to be here, and where he was supposed to be instead.

Damian stood and balanced lightly on the broad branch, scanning the horizon, full of unfamiliar sensations – fear, anticipation, and worst of all, hope.


End file.
